Re: Applying outstanding patches [bug-grep]

[Julian Foad]

Tim Waugh wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 05:05:42PM +0200, Claudio Fontana wrote:
> > is repeated in the patch three times.
> > This cries for a helper function
> > (convert_multibyte_offset ?).
>
> While factoring out segments like this, it is really important to make
> sure that they are entirely the same.

Of course.  I used to encounter this in my day job often enough that I wrote an 
editor macro that showed me a diff between the clipboard and the selected 
region.  I would mark the first chunk, copy, mark the second chunk, diff.

>  I seem to remember that some of
> them are tweaked in various small ways.

Eww.  That's a recipe for breakage later.

>  The patch I currently have
> (the one we're talking about) has been well tested, and I don't
> believe it introduces any regressions.

Well, good.  Obviously your patches have been well tested "in the field" which 
is greatly reassuring.  One of the things I am trying to do with each of these 
patches, actually, is determine what bug(s) it intends to fix, and to try and 
make sure we have a regression test for it.  Admittedly that may not be 
practical in the case of "performance" (speed) improvements, but at least for 
the correctness bugs.  I have gone through your patches as logged in the Grep 
Savannah issue tracker, and tried to add pointers to the original bug reports 
in the Red Hat tracker, because there are usually explanations of the bug and 
reproduction recipes there.  It's difficult to use a source code patch when the 
scope and details of the problem it addresses are not specified.  If you could 
go through and add descriptions and pointers to reports to the rest of them, 
that would be great.

> Feel free to restructure it, but do please make sure to test it very
> thoroughly.

Sure, but maybe you can help us with testing.  For instance, did you use any 
automated test scripts?

> I think "more harm than good" is a little melodramatic, don't you? :-)

Well, maybe a little, but actually I would concur that avoidance of such 
duplication is extremely important and that some of the bugs that already exist 
can almost be blamed on poor code structure - in that it would have been much 
easier to spot or avoid them if it had been well structured.

- Julian

--
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